👉 Bahía Blanca, una ciudad no acostumbrada a inundaciones, enfrenta una situación crítica tras recibir más de 170 milímetros de lluvia en solo dos horas. Las intensas precipitaciones han dejado hospitales y hogares bajo el agua, obligando a evacuar a más de 37 familias. La tormenta, estacionaria sobre la región, amenaza con empeorar la situación con pronósticos de más lluvias.
hablamos con Germán Sasso, periodista de "La Brújula".
👉 Seguí en #OtraMañana
📺 a24.com/vivo
hablamos con Germán Sasso, periodista de "La Brújula".
👉 Seguí en #OtraMañana
📺 a24.com/vivo
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NewsTranscript
00:00We are very complicated, we are very complicated, look, I'm on the side of the main avenue of Bahía Blanca, look what this is, we are, we are, we are complicated.
00:11There, unfortunately, you froze, I don't know if you have the audio, but the image is frozen.
00:16With the car, I am in Bahía Blanca.
00:20And there you are in the center of Bahía Blanca.
00:24This is, yes, a few blocks from the main square of Bahía Blanca in the May Park.
00:29And it is very impressive how it continues to rain, all the morning, raining in a very, very strong way.
00:36It was foreseen, it was announced, there was an orange alert, but you never imagined that there would be so many.
00:44Hospitals are flooded, hundreds of houses are flooded.
00:48There are people who are trying to flee their homes in a desperate way.
00:52Well, it's really a chaos.
00:54We still don't have a dimension of what is happening, Antonio.
00:59Yes, excuse me, I'm going to add our meteorologist, Nacho.
01:03Antonio, more than 170 millimeters of rain in the last two hours in an area of storms that practically remained stationary.
01:10That is why the torrential rain and the floods.
01:13There are already more than 37 families evacuated, according to the authorities, according to the Dirección de Información y Monitoreo de Alertas y Emergencias de la Provincia de Buenos Aires.
01:22And it is expected that at least until noon the heavy rain will continue.
01:26So, it is to be expected that the situation will worsen over Bahía Blanca and several locations in the southwest of the province.
01:32Will it get worse still?
01:33It is likely that yes, Antonio.
01:34It is likely that 100 more millimeters will fall because there are at least three more hours of heavy rain on that portion of the province of Buenos Aires.
01:42Unfortunately.
01:43Well, Germán, very bad news if this happens, right?
01:45Yes.
01:46100 millimeters more than 170?
01:49No, it's terrible.
01:50Look, Antonio, I have a measure so that we can take dimension.
01:55I am in the upper area of the city, I am trying to get to the radio where we are every morning.
02:01And it is impossible.
02:02And in the upper area there are flooded houses and streets.
02:05It is impossible for this area to flood.
02:07Imagine, Bahía is on a slope, Bahía, the center, a large part of the city is in a well.
02:12Imagine what the rest of the city is like.
02:14All the water towards the sea is like rivers and rivers that go down from the upper area.
02:19And flooded houses, impassable streets.
02:22Not even 4x4 vehicles can circulate because it follows you above the hood of the water.
02:27It is a thing never seen and very sad.
02:31Now what you are seeing, we are seeing there, this is the guard of the hospital Pena.
02:39Also under water, everything.
02:41Wow, look at what this is.
02:42But apart, in two hours.
02:44Two hours, 170 millimeters.
02:47It is, let's say, responsible for the air loaded with humidity.
02:51As I have been telling you throughout this week, this tropical air.
02:54And it is interacting with a cold air front that still did not have the necessary strength
02:58to advance to the northeast.
03:00That is why it is almost stationary over the same region.
03:03And that is why two hours in a row with such rain.
03:06That generates complications, floods, a disaster.
03:10Excuse me, Nacho.
03:11This rain, what we are seeing in Bahía Blanca,
03:15is what is coming towards everything that is the metropolitan area here in the city of Buenos Aires?
03:20Yes, but what happens is that it will happen fast.
03:22We here in the city of Buenos Aires expect the storm to be very strong
03:25between midnight and three in the morning.
03:27But the passage will be much faster.
03:30Let's say that the worst part is being taken by them in the south of Buenos Aires and parts of La Pampa.
03:35Because that storm system is still semi-stationary.
03:38Nacho, what we are seeing behind you,
03:40Germán, we are seeing an image with cars directly covered with water from Bahía Blanca.
03:46It's terrible, it's terrible.
03:49I can't look too much because it's always raining.
03:53There they try to cross.
03:55Obviously, the municipality is asking people not to leave their homes.
03:59I know that there are many people who are being flooded.
04:01But the risks outside are even greater.
04:04We have to be careful with the electrical risk.
04:06They told us, of course, but outside it is much more risky.
04:10Because you don't know where you step.
04:11They start to cover you directly.
04:13The cords have disappeared through the water, the sidewalks.
04:17There are no sidewalks, there are no streets.
04:19So it is very dangerous to circulate.
04:21The flooded hospitals, the flooded airport.
04:24Well, the evacuation centers so far report about 50 to 60 people.
04:29But I hope I'm wrong.
04:31There will be hundreds.
04:32Because the lower part of Bahía is impressive as it is.
04:36The photos that come to us from those sectors.
04:38Houses directly with meters of water.
04:41Not with centimeters, with meters of water.
04:43We have had a very strong storm for a year and a half.
04:46A storm of wind that caused deaths, that caused destruction.
04:51But that amount of water is unheard of.
04:53Bahía is a dry area.
04:55Bahía is not a flood zone.
04:58Well, we are witnessing a phenomenon that we do not know.
05:04Tell me, Nacho.
05:05I already know this, look.
05:06In December 2023, it was the wind.
05:09They were destroyed by wind and hail.
05:12But the main meteorological phenomenon on that occasion had been the wind.
05:15Look at the storms that at this time in the morning can be seen with satellite images.
05:20It is really a very impressive vertical development.
05:23Because the Bordeaux means that the temperature at the top of the cloud is below 80 degrees below zero.
05:30That is, the cloudiness that there is over Bahía Blanca, the southeast of La Pampa too.
05:35It is of an impressive vertical development.
05:38And the more vertical development the cloudiness has,
05:41it has a cloud, the more associated precipitation or hail phenomena it has below the cloudiness.
05:47And see how practically that line of storms is formed in San Luis, parts of La Pampa,
05:53and it moves continuously to the southwest of the province of Buenos Aires,
05:57in the direction of the city of Bahía Blanca.
05:59It will continue like this for a couple of hours more.
06:01Yes, Germán.
06:02No, there is a lot of fear because, as you said,
06:05the rain is also very strong in the area.
06:07And here in Bahía Blanca, let's say, those drops end.
06:11The rest come from the land of the window, for example.
06:14And the impact is always two or three hours after it rains in the mountains.
06:18So, flooded bay, with the water that comes from the mountains,
06:21that comes down from the area, I don't want to imagine what awaits us in the next few hours.
06:25What you see now is already chaotic.
06:27I don't want to imagine what will happen in the next few hours.
06:30That is why what they ask in principle is precaution,
06:34not to leave the houses if public transport is suspended,
06:37only emergency vehicles circulate, collapsed hospitals,
06:41they ask for the classes that had been suspended last night,
06:44but the warning is not to leave your house.
06:47We are seeing now, this is two blocks from the hospital.
06:51People are uploading videos there to the networks.
06:55But not only the amount of water, the speed of the water.
07:00Yes, the whole city has become a lagoon.
07:05Don't you dare try to cross the speed of the water that takes you there.
07:09Well, there are cars that I just saw,
07:12there are cars that were crossed because the current moved them.
07:15That's why the best thing is not to go out.
07:17You don't have an imperial need to stay at home
07:20and then call by phone, which is an emergency, right?
07:23The civil center is working very well, but of course it is collapsed.
07:26There are many, there are hundreds and hundreds of families
07:30whose water goes up and they don't know what to do, right?
07:34What is shocking is that this is in two hours.
07:39Last night there was nothing of this.
07:43No, exactly, the heavy rain started at 4 am.
07:47We woke up, the vast majority of the city woke up at that time
07:51because it was so noisy that it caused the rain.
07:54We woke up, it is not common, it is not normal.
07:57There is a dry area and we don't even have 10% of what is raining now.
08:01We never had it.
08:04I don't know if it's climate change,
08:06but they are phenomena that are already repeating themselves.
08:09We had a storm of wind a year and a half ago
08:11and now this flood that has consequences that we still don't know, Antonio.
08:16And you, Mohan, can you drive around there?
08:19Are you able to move forward?
08:21Well, I advanced up to three blocks from the radio
08:24where I work, in the compass, which is in Alem and Uruguay.
08:28Now I am in Alem and Colombia, which is three blocks away.
08:32Vehicles have been left, so I decided not to advance.
08:36We are trying to do the program from here.
08:38Well, I told you that they could get to the radio.
08:40It's a thing that ...
08:42Look, I'll show you, this is the May Park.
08:44It looks like a lagoon, but it's the May Park, look.
08:50Notice the collective stop.
08:54Some sectors of electricity are maintained.
08:58I understand that it must be because in the storm of a year and a half ago
09:02all the poles, all the power poles, all the power lines were replaced.
09:07So they are quite new.
09:09That's why some sectors still have electricity.
09:11There are many sectors without electricity,
09:13but there are others that continue to maintain it.
09:16And I understand that it is a product of that exchange that there was a year ago.
09:22These are images that you see in the movies.
09:24What we are seeing now, at this time, at 8 and a quarter in the morning,
09:29are images that you see in the movies that you would never have imagined.
09:33Yes, and unfortunately, because of the projections that Nacho told us,
09:37it still has a couple of hours of heavy rain.
09:42It's going to get worse.
09:45Without a doubt, it's already a record.
09:47Because everything is collapsed.
09:49If there is a reasonable rain, it is no longer enough to drain.
09:53The area is also complicated.
09:55The route is 75 to 100 km.
10:01This year it is already a record of rain.
10:07For Bahía Blanca, the monthly average is 70 mm,
10:10which usually rains throughout the month.
10:12Almost 200 mm are already falling in a few hours.
10:16I was checking the weather service statistics.
10:18The maximum daily precipitation was recorded on March 4, 2009,
10:2280 with 108 mm.
10:24That is, it already breaks all the rain records for one day in particular
10:29and for the month in the area of Bahía Blanca.
10:32Yes, it is twice the record it had of rain in a day.
10:35It is twice and in two hours.
10:37Exactly.
10:38And it continues.
10:39Yes, from what Nacho says, it continues.
10:41And there we saw, in addition to the car ...
10:44And in a few hours, because it started hard at 4 in the morning.
10:50Wow.
10:51At 100.
10:52What a level of destruction that water has.
10:54You don't stop it with anything.
10:58All this week, the area of Carué, Guaminí,
11:01in the southwest of Buenos Aires,
11:03has been recording impressive rains.
11:06A rain that in the last seven days accumulated 500-600 mm.
11:10What happens is that such an alarming situation
11:13in those locations that I was just telling you about,
11:15because the rain was intermittent.
11:17It started last weekend
11:19and it happened throughout this week.
11:21The problem with this rain in Bahía Blanca
11:23is the precipitation rate.
11:26That is, in two or three hours, what rains in two months.
11:29I'm seeing images, because in the networks there are ambulances
11:32completely underwater.
11:34Cars rolling.
11:36How is the hospital Pena?
11:37The hospital Pena is completely flooded.
11:40They are running sick from pavilion to pavilion,
11:43from room to room.
11:45They have water under their shirts.
11:47It is a very unfortunate thing.
11:53Cars completely underwater.
11:56There we are seeing images of the hospital
11:58trying to evacuate as best they can.
12:01Look at what this is,
12:02all the part of the incubator,
12:04all the part of the neonatology.
12:09What a disaster.
12:11There is a lot of water.
12:19Terrible.
12:20The number of evacuees is increasing
12:22practically every 15 minutes,
12:24because there were 37 and now there are 40 families evacuated.
12:28And we have to wait for the situation to worsen,
12:31because until 12 noon
12:33we are going to put an estimated schedule.
12:35The hospital is completely unused,
12:37but completely unused.
12:39And from here to several.
12:41And I don't know how to recover.
12:43That's why.
12:44Completely unused.
12:45In addition, the whole hospital is under water.
12:48Then there are some images,
12:50cars where you can only see the roof.
12:52We are talking about Bahia Blanca,
12:54an urban area.
12:59I don't know if we lost Germán.
13:02Good.
13:03Well, he will have to do his program
13:05and follow the compass.
13:06If we don't reconnect,
13:08thank you very much to Germán Saso
13:10there in Bahia Blanca.